Black Run

by D. L. Marshall

  ‘How so?’

  He tapped the screen again. ‘They left their AIS active.’ My face must have been blank as he continued for my benefit. ‘Auto ID system. Transponder. Boat information.’

  Katanga turned again. ‘They’re not that stupid. They’re catching up, but not pushing too hard, not too risky.’

  ‘Who’s on board?’ I said, to myself and mostly rhetorical.

  ‘We were kinda hoping you could help us with that.’

  I gave him another blank look.

  ‘Fuck, Tyler. You treat this like it’s a game.’

  ‘Because it is. Because if it’s more than that, then…’ I shrugged.

  ‘You’ve kidnapped their guy, using my boat for some kind of extrajudicial rendition shit, they’ve been on the radio. You’re gonna have to start sharing some information real soon or we’re all gonna be in the shit.’

  ‘I chartered your boat “no questions asked”, do I need to get the crayons out to explain what that means?’

  ‘It’s not a game, Tyler, not to us!’ He slammed a hand on the dash. ‘Not to my crew!’ He dismissed me with a wave but I didn’t move. ‘Kat, bang a U-ey,’ he said, snatching his pad of paper with his calculations back. ‘We can put into Brest before they catch us, dump these motherfuckers, and get back to the Med where we belong.’

  ‘Brest?’

  ‘Should reach it by lunchtime if we pull out the stops.’

  ‘Brest, the home of the French Navy? That Brest?’

  ‘They won’t look twice at us.’

  ‘They will if I put a call in.’

  Katanga looked at Miller, hand still hovering on the wheel as he decided whether to listen to his captain or the man who was paying him.

  ‘Put it this way,’ I continued. ‘I’m paying you to take us to England. No England, no pay.’

  In the corner of my eye Katanga made up his mind on which way it’d go, settling back into the chair.

  ‘Goddammit, give me something, Tyler. I need to know what’s gonna happen when they come over that horizon.’

  ‘Bad things.’

  His stare dialled down several degrees.

  ‘Just hold your course,’ I said, jabbing a finger at his chest.

  I left the bridge, swaying down the stairs. Like Miller said, it’d be fairly easy to know if the ship drastically changed direction, simply by taking note of which wall I fell into.

  The lights winked out. Eerie music drifted out of the radio room, I spun as someone whispered close by but there was no one there. The red emergency lights kicked in, the music faded away, I slid along one wall until I reached the glowing fangs of the radio room doorway. Nic was still sat in silence with his back to me.

  Filing cabinets and charts covered one wall. Impressive and expensive-looking but largely obsolete radio equipment filled another. All overkill for a light freighter, but obviously a relic of the vessel’s previous occupation. I remembered the last time I was in a cramped radio room. Despite the previous circumstances, this one was in a far worse condition. I noticed some of the radio equipment was missing the knobs from the dials, cracked glass, frayed wiring.

  The lights buzzed and flickered again. Nic closed a laptop and pulled out a cigarette from a pack on the desk, made a meal out of lighting it, turning to the radio, blowing smoke. A bobble-head Father Christmas nodded at me from the windowsill, going crazy every time a wave pummelled the ship.

  ‘Hey,’ I knocked on the door, ‘seen my friend?’

  Nic jumped a mile, banging his legs on the desk, the headphones clattered to the floor, pulling the wire from the socket. Static and faint voices burst into the room. He scrabbled to plug it back in, dropping his cig in the process. I scooped it up and held it out for him.

  He put the headphones on the desk, cleared his throat and spoke, with a melodic Marseillais accent that I had to concentrate on to catch fully. He was moaning about me being in there.

  I shrugged and spoke English again, slower this time. ‘My friend. King. He been in here?’

  ‘I have not seen him.’

  ‘Convenient,’ I said as he slipped the headphones back on.

  ‘Tyler!’ Miller barked, I turned to see him standing in the doorway, face the colour of bacon left in the fridge too long. ‘I thought I told you to get below, you’ve got no business in here.’ He slammed a palm against the bulkhead, the lights buzzed back on.

  I nodded, stepped towards the doorway, holding the frame as we rocked.

  ‘Nic, isn’t it?’

  He turned in his chair, holding his earphones off his head.

  ‘That’s a nice knife you’ve got.’

  He frowned.

  ‘The one you had earlier. What is it?’

  He smiled. ‘It’s a Bundeswehr knife, why?’

  ‘I thought so. Can I see it?’

  Miller grabbed my arm, with the help of the rolling ship he pulled me from the room. I stumbled against the far wall, grabbing the hot pipes to keep upright.

  Miller was leaning across, waving his hand in my face. ‘You might be paying but this is my ship, Tyler, my crew. You don’t go throwing your weight around.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m paying for safe delivery of my cargo to England.’ I recovered my balance and slammed him against the wall, he pushed back but I gripped his shirt and slammed him again. ‘Safe delivery!’

  His eyes were wide, he pulled his hands up to his face, thinking I was about to stick the nut on him. ‘You never told me the cargo was alive, and we’d be chased all the way!’

  ‘It doesn’t change a thing. I’m half minded to get a refund.’

  ‘A refund when your own man killed him?’ Miller shoved again, almost trying for a punch but thinking better of it, he knew he’d still come off worse even if I had my hands tied. I let him go and moved back against the opposite wall, staring into his eyes. They were black, chest rising and falling, a man on the edge, though on a totally different one to me. The lights buzzed and flicked out again, we continued to stare at each other in the red glow.

  ‘My cargo is lying in a room you told me was secure, with a knife sticking out of his chest that belongs to one of your crew.’

  ‘Find King, get to your cabin.’

  ‘Confined to quarters now, is that it?’

  ‘Since you came on board my boat you’ve been waltzing round like you own it. You think you’re tough, but my crew aren’t choirboys and you’re outnumbered two to one.’ He gestured around the passageway. ‘We see any of you out of your cabins before we hit the Channel tonight, I won’t be responsible for my crew’s actions.’

  He retreated back up the stairs to the bridge, I let him, he was in no mood to help me. I wasn’t worried about him – what worried me were the odds, which he was right about, and I’d seen they had the hardware to back it up. The closer that pursuing boat got, the longer King stayed hidden somewhere, the more precarious our situation would become.

  And worse still, someone had killed my captive. Someone had plans of collecting that bounty. And not King, I was sure of that. Someone on Miller’s crew.

  I’d been in far worse situations, had faith in Fields and Marty, but still, things had the potential to get very ugly, very quickly.

  I looked back at the radio room door, then around the others leading off into what I presumed were the crews’ quarters. I waited until I heard the bridge door slam above and then hit the room opposite, closing the door behind me and flicking the light on, past giving a shit if it was occupied.

  It wasn’t. The cabin was furnished in a similar way to mine, fehgrau steel softened with splintered Seventies wood veneer cladding two walls, chipped plywood cupboards, and a desk with every surface and corner so obliterated I presumed at one stage it hadn’t been bolted to the deck as securely as it now was. There the comparison to my cabin ended, as this room was single-occupancy, and clearly for the long-term.

  A flat-screen TV was screwed into the desk with a PlayStation 3 bungeed to the drawers below. Above the de
sk the dark sea rolled behind a deep window ledge, spray flecking the glass.

  A high-sided bed was also bolted to the floor, above it a lipped shelf ran the length of the wall. An elastic bungee ran across to hold books on during a storm but at the moment it was being stretched to breaking point round a stack of PS3 games leaning precariously out over the bed.

  I bet myself it was Katanga’s cabin.

  I rummaged through the drawers and confirmed it when I found his passport, or more correctly, several of them, in differing nationalities – some better forgeries than others. A stack of cash suggested he trusted the rest of the crew, the ammunition rolling around in the bottom said he wasn’t entirely trusting by nature. The door opposite the bed covered a wardrobe, which smelled strongly of weed. There was nothing to be gained by hanging around: it was Nic’s room I was interested in.

  I opened the door slowly, checked the coast was clear, and closed the door softly behind me. I listened again, satisfied no one was coming, opened the next door and slipped inside.

  The room was the same size but double-occupancy, we were obviously further down the hierarchy here. The beds either side were unmade, sheets hanging on the dirty floor, clothes kicking around. Dirty jeans, odd socks, a pair of oily overalls hung on the door behind me. I swept a hand along the shelf above the bed next to me, knocking off a clock, a gun magazine, a phone charger, some dust. The shelf above the other bed held even less, but did have a rogue spanner. That was interesting; it was clearly the room Seb and Vincent shared, but I don’t know many decent engineers who didn’t take pride in their tools, and who wouldn’t have put that straight back in its rightful place.

  Lockers held more clothes, empty cig packets, broken lighters. Nothing to go on, nothing at all that told me anything interesting about the occupants of the room.

  Every other time I’d used Miller’s transportation services his chief had been Étienne, a Basque ex-Marine Nationale engineer, and a damn good one. I’d spent hours down in engine rooms with him. All irrelevant now, but what was extremely relevant was that he’d been murdered not long before I’d stepped on board, his place taken by a couple of new guys who I knew nothing about – and, by the state of their room, it would remain that way.

  I crouched, looking under the bed. A distinctly Mediterranean-looking spider reared up then scuttled away. It’d been guarding nothing more than empty food wrappers and underwear. Under the other bed was a greasy streak along the back wall and rat droppings next to a vent cover, I could hear banging echoing up from the engine room below.

  My knees groaned, I shifted and put a hand out to steady myself and that’s when I saw it. Scratched into the grey painted steel of the bedframe, a tiny symbol. Like a cart wheel with broken spokes, it was a Sonnenrad, or Black Sun. A symbol commonly used by far-right and neo-Nazi organisations. I traced my thumb across the scratches, smearing grease across it. It was fairly new, likely carved by one of the room’s occupants.

  So we had the regular engineer of years, murdered in an unrelated scuffle days before we sailed, replaced by two new guys who didn’t bring any personal effects with them but did carve white supremacist symbols into the furniture. Cool, cool.

  I opened the door again to footsteps approaching down the bridge stairs. Split-second decision: back in the room or out into the passageway. I went for the passageway in case it was Seb or Vincent, not wanting to explain why I was snooping round their room.

  It was Katanga, frowning. ‘Still holding course, Mr Tyler. For now.’

  ‘For now?’

  ‘For now. You were looking for Mr King?’

  ‘Yeah, seen him?’

  He nodded. ‘I just told the captain. He’ll get himself killed before we get to England… if he isn’t dead already.’

  The way he chuckled didn’t sound threatening, which is always good. ‘Why do you say that?’

  He pointed to the door at the end of the passage.

  ‘He went outside? Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘I assume for the same reason he’s been going outside every five minutes since we left La Rochelle.’ He comically mimed throwing up.

  I walked to the door and grabbed the handle, Katanga’s face dropped. ‘What are you doing?’

  Water lashed the porthole as the boat lurched and twisted, I looked back at Katanga. ‘Scared of a bit of rain?’

  He walked to me, leaning on the doorframe. ‘Going outside in this storm is not wise.’ He looked out of the porthole and crossed his arms.

  ‘So what you waiting here for? Can’t turn the ship around if I get washed overboard.’

  ‘I’m watching so that if I see you get washed overboard I can tell Captain Miller we can all go home.’

  I opened the door, rain and spray blew in, soaking me immediately. Beyond the spray there was nothing. We were heading away from the sunrise, whenever it finally came, still forging into darkness, into the unknown.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Château des Aigles

  Five days previously

  Somewhere in the distance an animal screeched, cut short by a gust shrieking between the pines. I lay on my back in the snow, motionless, waiting, listening. Nothing, no shouts, no engines, no lights flared in the whirling snow above me.

  I’d glided across fresh powder towards the copse, entering at high speed before slowing in the cover of the trees, weaving between narrow trunks and piles of fallen snow, sheltered beneath bowing branches. Leaving the treeline, I’d hit the deep snow on the fields and cut sideways, dropping backwards, falling into the snow. I’d been lying on my back, watching the thick clouds dropping more snow on me, only too aware that if any of the inhabitants in the house chose to shine a powerful torch across the mountainside, they’d see three different sets of tracks cutting a path straight to each of us.

  At this hour, torch beams were doubtful. We’d planned carefully, knew their routine, worked out the blind spots, where McCartney and Ringo could approach the house unseen. The biggest risk to the job was me, leaving the safety of the pines to cross in front of the house and its sweeping fields, Lenor-fresh blankets of unbroken white.

  I rolled over, sinking further, staying low as I unclipped my boots from the bindings. I unravelled a strap attached to the webbing over my shoulders, snapped a carabiner onto the board then crept forward, hunched over. The snow was thigh-deep out of the cover of the trees and the going was slow, towing my board behind me. To my left, about 400 metres up the slope if I’d got my approach angle right, the lights of the house blazed a wide swathe, highlighting the swirling snow.

  The unending white was utterly featureless, no undulations, an entirely flat carpet, dropping steeply away to the lights of the village below. A perfect killing zone, if one needed it, akin to the stretches of woodland razed around a castle to give defenders a good view of attackers. An unbroken field of fire, me right in the middle.

  But 400 metres from the house put me deep in shadow. Someone at the windows staring straight down would struggle to pick me out in daylight, let alone at night in a blizzard.

  I stepped forward again, deep snow creaking and squeaking beneath my boots. The heavy snow of the last twenty-four hours had settled on top of the layer of the last few weeks and hadn’t had time to bond. I reckoned on the slope being a little over thirty degrees, not good conditions. I was acutely aware I was cutting a potential break line across the meadow, risking fracturing the slab and sending the lot down. This wasn’t a particularly dangerous avalanche zone, but even the slightest slip could take me with it, onto the rocks below. It’d also bring everyone in the house out, not that I’d care if I was folded around a pine tree a couple of hundred metres down the hillside.

  I dropped, suddenly and without warning, down until the snow reached up to my chest. I held my breath, the ground felt solid beneath me. I crawled forward, pulling myself out and lying face down. The snow creaked. I’d dropped through a weak spot in the layer, a sure sign the slab was unstable. I crawled forward on my belly, still
towing my board behind. A whumpf sound came from below me, a crack raced along the slope. I paused.

  ‘In position,’ said McCartney in my ear.

  There was a crackle and then Ringo said, ‘Been in position for five minutes. Where the hell are you, Harrison?’

  ‘Almost in position,’ I whispered.

  ‘Confirmation target is in the house,’ said McCartney. ‘Bob is heading upstairs.’

  ‘Roger that,’ I said.

  ‘Roger who?’ asked McCartney.

  ‘Roger Taylor,’ said Ringo with a chuckle.

  Another whumpf sound, the fissure widened.

  ‘Cut the shit,’ I said. ‘Two minutes.’ I checked my watch, I was on track. ‘Anyway it’s Phil Collins, not Roger Taylor. Queen did Live Aid, not Band Aid.’

  I dragged myself across the creaking snow, after another minute’s struggle I had a good angle on the house. I pulled the snowboard in front of me, turned it on its edge and pushed it down into the snow, creating a small wall and, more importantly, a stable firing platform. I reached over the front to scoop snow against the board’s dark underside to provide additional camouflage.

  The lights from the house lit up a decked area and garden but failed to penetrate beyond. I knew from our recces that in the shadows beneath the overhanging roofs, snow had been swept into piles to create a walkway for the guards to pace circuits without changing into boots. We’d watched the one we’d dubbed Bono wearing a path around the house around eleven p.m. every night that we’d observed them.

  We could have waited until four a.m. for our assault, when everyone was likely to be in their beds and experience told us there’d be only one bodyguard on the prowl in the house. Problem with that was we didn’t know exactly where all those other bodyguards would be, or how close they’d be to a phone. Eleven; late enough for them to be relaxed and well oiled. Those that could drink would have been doing so for a while. They felt safe in their eagle’s nest, especially now with the beefed-up security. Heavily armed, nothing but an expanse of white around them, more guards posted in a cabin near the bottom of the road to warn them if anyone came up. And who would try anything here, in Western Europe? What did they have to fear? Especially now, with mainstream discourse veering further to the right thanks to the media they financed fuelling hate from Budapest to Liverpool.